More Than a Native Speaker, Third Edition: An Introduction to Teaching English Abroad

References

INTRODUCTION

Don’s Story

It was at the Taipei YMCA in 1979 that I first stood before a class as an English teacher, wondering how to survive the period with my dignity intact. I was sure of my command of English, but much less confident that I would even understand a jargon-laden question about English grammar rules, let alone be able to answer it.

I was also distinctly aware that knowing how to speak English was not the same as knowing how to teach English. What few vague ideas I had about language teaching dated from painful experiences in high school and college foreign language classes. These experiences had convinced me that there had to be a better way to teach language than lecturing on the finer points of grammar, but they had not shown me what that better way might be. Thus, in that first class period, I focused most of my attention more on my need not to make a fool of myself than on effective pedagogy, and my primary goal was to hear the bell ring before I ran out of things to say.

Over the next 2 years, as my skills improved and I became more confident, I became less worried about getting through a class period. In this stage of my development, I judged the success of a class period largely on whether or not students seemed to like a lesson, and I rarely persisted in any activity to which students did not quickly respond. As a result, my courses evolved into a series of greatest hits activities that entertained reasonably well and generated quite a bit of language practice, but did not have much continuity. Only after considerable trial and error — and a graduate program in language teaching—was I able to move from a standard of Do my students like this activity? to one of Is this activity really going to help them learn?

This is not to say that the English courses I taught during my earlier years were a waste of students’ time; I no doubt provided the students with good practice opportunities and valuable language knowledge, and I may have enhanced their interest in language learning by making it more enjoyable than it might otherwise have been. However, as I studied the rudiments of the language teaching craft, I learned not only how to teach language lessons more effectively but also how to help students learn to structure more productive language learning experiences.

Novice Teachers of English

Every year, many thousands of men and women from English-speaking nations go abroad as English teachers through a variety of volunteer, academic, government, and church organizations. Many others locate English teaching jobs through recruitment agencies, Internet job boards, or personal connections, or simply by appearing in a city and asking around. Though these novice language teachers often face problems similar to those described above, over time, many learn to be good language teachers. To a large extent, success in teaching is based on qualities such as diligence, patience, and common sense, which many nonprofessionals possess in abundance, and many novice teachers make a significant educational contribution to their host nations in spite of their lack of professional training. However, learning the craft of language teaching by trial and error can take a long time and involve considerable emotional wear and tear on both teachers and students. The purpose of this book is to accelerate the process by providing a nontechnical introduction to English teaching that is geared toward the special needs of novice native-English-speaking teachers working abroad. Therefore, throughout this book, we refer to our target audience as novice teachers (NTs) of English.

The NT Teaching Experience Abroad

Because teaching English as an NT in a foreign country is quite different from teaching as a trained teacher in an English-speaking country, the assumptions and emphases of this book are different from those of most introductions to English teaching in several ways. We assume that:

1. NTs need a practical introduction to teaching abroad. Most NTs have some experience with language learning as a result of high school or college foreign language courses, have a native or near-native knowledge of English, and have a native understanding of at least one English-speaking culture. However, most NTs do not have professional training or experience in language teaching and are not necessarily interested in making a career of it. Therefore, this book is a practical introduction to the range of issues involved in learning to teach English abroad rather than a scholarly introduction to the language teaching profession as a whole. The book is based firmly on current English teaching thought and research as well as on the authors’ experiences as language teachers and language learners. However, we assume that what an NT needs most is a readily intelligible distillation of English teaching theory and practice, explained with a minimum of technical jargon.

2. NTs can learn culture through genuine communication. In contrast to English teachers in English-speaking countries, NTs must not only learn how to teach English, but also learn about and adapt to the expectations, goals, methods, and resources of an unfamiliar educational system and culture. In addition to posing challenges, this situation has distinct advantages, one being that it provides an excellent opportunity for genuine communication; students are experts in their culture, so many activities can involve students in talking and writing about their culture in order to help educate the teacher.

3. Adapting to life in a foreign culture can be difficult and affect teaching. NTs abroad are trying to cope with teaching while simultaneously undergoing the exciting but sometimes difficult process of adapting to life in a foreign culture. Though this adaptation process may normally be outside the range of topics considered in a book on language teaching, we have chosen to discuss it because it not only has a significant impact on the life of NTs abroad but can also affect their teaching — especially their effectiveness in teaching explicit or implicit lessons about culture and intercultural communication.

The Typical NT Environment

Teaching situations abroad can differ significantly according to the culture of the host country, students’ skill levels, the resources available, class size, and a host of other variables. The following are some common ways in which these situations may vary:

1. Equipment: In virtually all settings where NTs teach, there will at least be chalk and a blackboard or some equivalent. In some settings, computers, projectors, DVD players, and other types of equipment may also be available, and there may be good Internet access; in others access to the Internet and technology may be limited.

2. Materials: A textbook will probably be available for most English courses, though in some settings only the teacher may have a copy. In some settings, students will have access to a range of textbook options and a plethora of authentic English language resources, such as English television series and movies. In other settings, students may have very little access to textbooks or authentic reading and listening materials in English.

3. Student Age: The age range of students NTs might teach is broad, with the youngest consisting of preschool children and the eldest including retired adults. However, most NTs work with adolescents (especially the higher levels of secondary school) or young adults (especially university students or young working people).

4. Class Size: Though it is increasingly common for NTs to have classes with only 20 or 30 students, there are settings where class sizes are much larger than this, perhaps even exceeding 100. At the other end of the scale, in some private teaching settings, it is possible to have as few as five or six students.

5. Skill Levels: NTs teach students at every skill level; some students are brushing up their command of the terminology of nuclear physics and others still don’t understand How are you? However, NTs usually face students lying somewhere between these two extremes who have adequate English skills for rudimentary communication with a foreign English teacher in class but who cannot yet communicate fluently. In many countries, students can read more than they can say or understand in conversation.

6. Programs: NTs often teach within established programs (i.e., with goals, curricula, expectations, evaluation systems), but by design or default many programs will leave room for innovation and decision-making on the teacher’s part.

7. Schools: NTs often work in the host country’s formal education system, teaching in primary, secondary, or tertiary institutions. However, some teach in private English centers, intensive English programs, test preparation centers (preparing students to take tests like the Test of English as a Foreign Language [TOEFL] or the International English Language Testing System [IELTS]), or various English villages or clubs.

8. Language Environment: Most NTs teach in places where English is not widely used outside the classroom. This limits students’ opportunity for practice and prob lematizes students’ goals and motivation. For example, in many countries, students study primarily to get high scores on exams; consequently, they study in ways that prepare them for tests but do not help them develop usable English skills. This, in turn, means that they may lose interest in English study once they no longer have tests to pass.

9. Culture: Many NTs will teach in non-Western societies, some of which are relatively traditional societies that look more to their past for values and practices than most Western societies do. In some of these societies, attitudes toward English teaching have been influenced by traditional methods for learning to read a prestige language, such as classical Chinese in China and Arabic in many Islamic countries (languages that play a role similar to that which Latin played in premodern Europe). Such societies tend to value the authority of the printed word and of the teacher, see language learning as knowledge acquisition rather than skill development, and emphasize study of texts (grammar, vocabulary, and reading) more than speaking and listening skills. Though these values have begun to change as an increasingly global economy increases the importance of effective communication in English, grammar books and dictionaries often still have a very high degree of authority. As a result, NTs’ assumptions about how one should teach and learn language may differ considerably from those of their students and colleagues.

10. Relationship to the West: The position of economic, military, and cultural dominance that English-speaking nations have occupied over the past two centuries allows a few generalizations about the relationship between the NT’s culture and that of the host country. First, many (but not all) NTs teach in nations that are not as wealthy as the teachers’ home countries. Second, the wealth, technology, markets, and cultural power of English-speaking nations often inspire considerable admiration (and much of the motivation for English study) in the host country. These feelings may, however, be complicated by feelings of bitterness toward ex-colonial and imperial powers. Students may have very mixed feelings about the English-speaking nations of the West, and some NTs have been surprised at the speed with which a class of students that seemed very enthusiastic about the West becomes defensive or even hostile.

Theoretical Assumptions

In this book, we primarily take the communicative language teaching (CLT) approach; in other words, we stress the idea that language is a tool for communication and that communicative activity should play a major role in the language classroom. We take this stance not only because it is a dominant trend in current thinking about language teaching, but also because most NTs find it instinctively appealing and comfortable to work with. At times, however, we also discuss teaching methods, such as text memorization, that are associated with other theoretical approaches. This is partly because we share the belief of many scholars that there is no single theory of language teaching that is authoritative (e.g., Omaggio Hadley, 2001; Brown, 2002; Richards & Burns, 2012). Given the tendency of many Westerners to be critical of traditional or outdated approaches — and the distinct possibility that some host colleagues will use these methods — NTs need to be able to see the reasons for and merit of these methods. Without this bit of empathy, they may end up alienating both their colleagues and their students.

As language teaching professionals increasingly recognize, the English classroom is often not the most important focus of activity for many students. In many cases, students’ success in learning a language depends more on the effectiveness of their strategies outside class than on the skill of the language teacher in class. This is especially true for the many students who do not study English in full-time programs and whose success depends on the work they do outside class. It is also especially true for students whose native language is not closely related to English and whose acquisition of English is not speeded by the vocabulary, grammatical, or cultural similarities that accelerate the English study of many European students. Consequently, we will also discuss study methods and ways for students to plan their own study programs.

We approach listening, speaking, reading, writing, grammar, vocabulary, and culture separately rather than organizing discussion based on whole-language approaches to teaching and learning. This is a deliberate choice; such divisions are likely familiar to NTs as a result of their experiences in foreign language classes. Also, many of the schools and students with whom NTs will work tend to think in terms of these categories, and teachers who are learning a new craft in a new environment would be wise to begin from what is familiar to both them and the students.

Topics in this book are sequenced roughly in the order in which an NT is likely to need the information. The first section of the book, Preparing to Teach (Chapters 1–6), is devoted to issues of classroom survival: basic principles of language learning and teaching, and course and lesson planning. The second section, Aspects of English Teaching (Chapters 7–14), discusses the various aspects of language teaching in more detail. Finally, Chapter 15 addresses adaptation to life in the host country, and Chapter 16 suggests future paths for NTs who become interested in being professional language teachers.

Changes in the Third Edition

In this new edition of More Than a Native Speaker, there are a number of important changes:

The text has generally been revised and updated.

New research findings have been incorporated into our discussion of various teaching methods.

Our discussion of technology and media has been updated and expanded.

Also included is an accompanying web page that includes additional activity ideas to augment the activities in Appendix B, as well as a comprehensive listing of online resources for teachers and learners.

Go to www.tesol.org/nativespeaker to access these valuable resources.

The references have been updated, partly to bring in new voices and research, and partly to reflect new editions of the books we cite.

Last but not least, a very important and felicitous change in the third edition is that Maxi-Ann Campbell has come on board as coauthor. We have revised this book as a team; occasionally, one of us will provide personal notes or experiences:

FROM DON: In addition to the general experience and perspective that Maxi brings to the book, her contribution is especially valuable for bringing this book firmly into the 21st century by updating aspects of the book dealing with the Internet and technology, things that are a native language to her in a way that will probably never be true for me.

Additional Notes

This book is intended for NTs from any English-speaking nation, but we will be more convincing and accurate if we draw primarily on our own U.S. background for language and culture examples. Asia in general and China in particular are overgenerously represented in our choice of examples; again, this is because much of our language teaching experience has been in the East. Finally, we beg your indulgence for our use of Westerners to refer to people from countries where most people speak English as their first language. It is simply too much of a mouthful to consistently refer to U.S. citizens, Canadians, British, Irish, Australians, New Zealanders, and others.

As much as possible, we have tried to use plain English rather than jargon and abbreviations. The few exceptions are as follows: English as a foreign language (EFL) refers to teaching English in a country where English is not widely used. This is in contrast to English as a second language (ESL), teaching English to non-English-speaking people in an English-speaking context. As mentioned earlier, CLT refers to communicative language teaching. And for the sake of convenience, we also allow ourselves the new acronym NT — novice teacher — to refer to native speakers of English who are serving as teachers of English abroad with little or no language teacher training.

Acknowledgments

FROM DON: Working on the first edition of this book, I was fortunate to receive assistance from a number of friends and colleagues and wish to express gratitude to Kate Parry and Shelly Chase for truly sacrificial efforts in reading over entire early drafts, to Clifford Hill for suggestions on evaluation methods, and to the anonymous TESOL reviewers for their generous gifts of expertise and time. Thanks also go to John Garoutte, Alexis Albion, Fred Elting, Chris Blankenship, and Jim Kwong for their feedback on various portions of the draft.

For comments and suggestions on the second edition, thanks go to Brad Baurain, Andy Cheely, Carl Jacobson, Anne Kavanagh, Mick Kavanagh, Charley Kelly, Hans Klar, Mary Beth Maher, Kitty Purgason, Lisa Reshad, May Shih, and Kim Strong. Thanks also to Alice Renouf and the Colorado China Council for the opportunity to try out the revised edition in their new teacher-training program in summer 2005, and to the two anonymous TESOL reviewers for the excellent suggestions they offered.

FROM DON AND MAXI: For the third edition, we want to thank our research assistant, Ren Yixiao, who gathered information on online resources being used by today’s English learners and helped us evaluate those resources from a learner’s perspective. We would also like to thank Zainab Aderonmu for sharing her teaching experience in Korea and helping us with suggested course plans, and Sophia Zhou and Edith Allen for other helpful tips. Last but certainly not least, we wish to thank Gilda Martinez-Alba, Margo DelliCarpini, Robert Freeman, and Brock Brady for reviewing this manuscript and offering a great number of very useful suggestions.

Of course, as always, ultimate responsibility for any nonsense remaining in the final product lies with us.

DON SNOW

MAXI-ANN CAMPBELL

PART 1

PREPARING TO TEACH

The chapters in this section address the issue of planning for language teaching. Chapter 1 discusses some basic principles of language teaching and learning. Chapter 2 suggests ways to gather information before planning your courses. Chapters 3 and 4 consider the basic elements of a language course, essentially that one of the most important rules of thumb in language teaching is:

Assessment.

Chapter 5 discusses the practical issues involved in planning a successful lesson, and Chapter 6 wraps up this section with some examples of how all of this is put together into typical language courses and lessons.

CHAPTER 1

PRINCIPLES OF LANGUAGE LEARNING AND THE ROLE OF THE TEACHER

Preview

How well students learn a language ultimately depends more on their own efforts than on the teacher’s. Thus, any attempt to understand effective language teaching must consider the issue of effective language learning.

Four basic realities of language learning are that language is a tool for communication, learning a language involves mastery of both knowledge and skill, the struggle to learn a language is a battle of the heart as well as the mind, and learners vary considerably in their preferred approaches to language learning.

The language teacher is not simply a transmitter of knowledge; like a coach, the language teacher needs to assist students in understanding the task before them, staying motivated, building discipline, and learning how to pursue the task on their own.

Students or colleagues in your host country may not share the assumptions stated above, so it is important to make your assumptions explicit to the students and to make sure that there is not too large a gap between your expectations and the students’.

What is a language teacher? Perhaps the first image that occurs to you is of a tidily dressed woman or man standing in front of an attentive class, explaining a grammar point or a new word. Then he or she checks whether students understand the point by asking each one a question or two, patiently correcting any mistakes they make. Most people have seen this model of teaching in films and on television, and many have been in language classes that were taught largely in this fashion; it would therefore be easy to let this model shape the way you set out to teach your own classes.

As a starting point, there is nothing wrong with this model, and it does a reasonably good job of portraying some aspects of the teacher’s role. However, there are also some ways it is misleading about a teacher’s role, and, in this chapter, we challenge some of the assumptions underlying this language teaching model, introduce a number of basic principles of language learning, and suggest a more nuanced and flexible model of the language teacher.

Why Focus First on Students?

Even though this is a book about language teaching, any discussion of teaching needs to start with students. In recent years, more and more books on language teaching place students rather than teachers at center stage. This shift is due to a growing recognition that whether or not students succeed in learning a language depends more on their own efforts than on the teacher’s and that a good program of instruction therefore needs to be student centered instead of teacher centered.

One reason it is important to view language learning as student centered is that students are individuals who differ in significant ways. First, students differ in their language knowledge and skills; one student may read well and have a broad vocabulary but be almost incapable of speech, while another student may have exactly the opposite profile of skills. Second, students differ in their learning styles and strengths; a study method that is intolerably boring, confusing, or intimidating for one student may prove comfortable and effective for another. Finally, students differ greatly in their levels of motivation, their attitudes toward study in general, and their feelings toward English study in particular. One student is quite diligent but resents Western cultural influence in her country, another thinks the West is appealing but he has little love for study, a third doesn’t care one way or another about English but would like to get a good grade on the final exam. Consequently, the reasons for a student’s successes or failures differ greatly from person to person; inevitably, no teacher-designed, one-size-fits-all lesson or program will meet the needs or suit the styles of all of the students in a class. Instead, as much as possible, students need to take charge of their own learning, choosing goals that fit their needs and strategies that work for them.

A second argument for student-centered approaches is that students learn more effectively if they are active participants in the learning process than if they only passively follow the teacher’s instructions. This is true if for no other reason than that much language study and practice takes place when the teacher is not around to give instructions or to check up on students. Students who actively take advantage of out-of-class study and practice opportunities will make much more long-term progress than students who consider them a chore to deal with as quickly as possible. Students who take responsibility for their own learning will not only improve their language skills more effectively throughout the course but have the agency and skills they need to continue studying after the course ends.

The final reason that language learning needs to focus on students is that few English as a foreign language (EFL) programs are long enough to guarantee that students will master English before they leave the program. In many countries, English is offered in middle school and even primary school—often as a required subject—but students study English only a few hours a week and have little opportunity to practice what they learn. Even the few students who complete a university major in English still usually have gaps in their English skills when they graduate, and students who are not English majors or who study in a night school have even less English training and practice. Thus, if a high level of proficiency is the goal, students will probably have to continue studying English long after they leave the educational system, and the students most likely to keep making progress toward mastery of English are those who are already accustomed to designing and carrying out their own language study plans.

Why Is It Important for Language Teachers to Be Language Learners?

For the reasons stated above, the focus of this book is frequently on language learning as much as on language teaching. To become increasingly effective as a language teacher, you must understand as much as possible about how the process of language learning works and what it feels like. Therefore, as you embark on your career as a language teacher, you also need to either continue or begin your career as a language learner. Given that this point is not normally emphasized in books on language teaching, we make this argument in some detail here. There are at least four main reasons language teachers should also be language learners.

1. Personal experience: The first and perhaps most obvious reason is that the more experience you have as a language learner, the more you will know about what does and doesn’t work in language learning. Decisions you as a language teacher make about what you require of students will have a significant impact on how students invest their study and practice time, so you must be sure that what you ask students to do will actually enhance their language learning. One of the best ways to assess the effectiveness of a given method is by trying it out yourself. Granted, what works for one person may not always be effective for another, so your personal experience as a language learner does not provide a perfect guide for what will benefit students, but it certainly provides a very good start. Furthermore, as you try different approaches and methods in your own language learning, your bag of language learning ideas and tricks will gradually fill, and you will have more alternatives to offer to students when they need to try something new.

2. More effective encouragement: A second reason your ongoing experience as a language learner will enhance your language teaching is that it will deepen your understanding of what it feels like to try to learn a new language. As we argue, language learning is a battle of the heart as much as of the mind, and your ability to empathize with students—to know how they feel—is the first step toward knowing how to more effectively encourage and motivate them (not to mention knowing how to avoid overwhelming them).

3. Conviction: Let us tentatively suggest that a third important benefit of language study has do with the level of conviction underlying your teaching. Novice teachers (NTs) may have only limited experience with foreign language study themselves, and many — especially those from English-speaking nations — have not achieved a significant level of proficiency in a foreign language. In fact, some NTs’ primary takeaway from high school or college foreign languages classes is that language study can be hard work.

Rubin and Thompson (1994) make the interesting observation that if an individual’s first experiences with a foreign language were not particularly pleasant or successful, he or she will tend to expect the next language learning experience to be just as stressful and unfruitful as the first (p. 8). It would seem reasonable to assume that negative language study experiences could color one’s language teaching. Teachers who have never experienced success or reward in language study may find it difficult to be emotionally convinced that such success is possible, and they may not really expect students to achieve a high degree of proficiency. These teachers may, in turn, communicate this lack of expectation to students through teaching practices that focus more on grades than on proficiency. We do not mean to suggest that someone who does not speak a foreign language cannot be a good English teacher. We do suggest, however, that language teachers who have never felt the rewards and successes of language learning may not have as much enthusiasm or as strong a proficiency orientation as those who are at least beginning to experience those rewards and successes in their own language study.

4. An equal exchange and mutual need: A final reason for you to be a language learner has to do with the symbolic message that choosing to study the host language sends to your host community. Presumably, one motivation for teaching English lies in a desire to build bridges of understanding between people of different nations and cultures, and the growing role of English as the world’s international language makes its mastery especially important in a world brought ever closer together by globalization. However, the same dominant role of English and its close association with globalization can make it a threat—symbolic or real—to other nations, languages, and cultures. English may be seen as a symbol and driving force of world homogenization or of the growing power of English-speaking nations.

We believe this problem makes it imperative for English teachers to be not merely advocates of the English language and Western culture but rather ambassadors who believe in the value of all languages and cultures and who promote the value of language and culture learning in general. If this is a message that you as a teacher wish to embody in a convincing way, it is one you must practice as well as preach. One of the most convincing ways to demonstrate respect for the value of languages other than English is by actively making the effort to learn another language (and culture). One additional symbolic advantage of studying the language of your host country is that it changes the nature of your relationship with your host. If you arrive in your host country solely as a knower and giver of the English language, your presence suggests an unequal exchange in which you have gifts to bring but need nothing that the host country has to offer. If, on the other hand, you arrive with the desire to learn as much as to teach, your presence suggests a more equal exchange, a mutual need to both teach and learn.

Though the primary function of this book is to introduce you to the teaching of English, our hope is that you also read it as a language learner, perhaps one about to embark on the study of a language you have not had much previous experience with.

What Are Some Basic Principles of Language Learning?

Of the great many points one could make about language learning, we focus on four that deserve special attention because they are central to communicative language teaching (CLT) and because they are points that learners in EFL settings can easily lose sight of:

1. Language is a tool for communication,

2. learning a language involves mastery of both skill and knowledge,

3. learners need to give serious consideration to the impact of feelings on language study, and

4. learners vary considerably in their preferred approaches to learning.

Language Is a Tool for Communication

Perhaps the most fundamental reality of language learning is that language is a tool for communication. As obvious as this point may seem, its implications are not always clear to students. Remember that many students’ experience of English learning trains them to see English as anything but a communication tool. The daily reality of English study for many students is one of memorizing words and rules in preparation for a test and rarely involves using English for communicative purposes. After years of this kind of noncommunicative study, students often lose interest and begin to see language learning as an exercise geared toward formal accuracy, especially on tests.

When English is presented as a tool for establishing communication with a new world, it is potentially more appealing. This communication can take a variety of forms; it can mean sharing ideas face to face with someone from a foreign country or gaining access to the knowledge embedded in the world’s vast library of material published in English. Although learning any language opens new doors, English’s growing role as an international language means it is now the language of publishing and speech for most international communication; it is often used even by people from non-English-speaking countries when they need to interact with people from other nations (Crystal, 2003). Learning English means developing the ability to understand and interact with a universe that is largely inaccessible to those who don’t know English.

There are other reasons to focus on communication in your teaching, one being that such a focus may make language teaching easier for you and interesting for your students. Many aspects of language teaching may initially seem unfamiliar and awkward to you; for example, most native speakers of English don’t start out with a natural knack for explaining the rules of English grammar. However, it is entirely natural for you to want to communicate with your students — and for them to want to communicate with you. Though your English courses can’t and shouldn’t focus entirely on getting to know you chats, they most definitely can and should harness the natural human desire to communicate. You will generally find that the more often you can give students the opportunity to communicate genuinely with you and each other in class, the more quickly you will be comfortable in your new teaching role.

Students must experience language as communication as early as possible in their learning if they are to see language as a communication tool and if they are to taste the thrill that mastery of a new language can entail. In an English class, this means using speaking or writing practice as an opportunity for students to share what they really think, feel, or believe. It also means that when students say or write something, you should respond to the ideas expressed rather than only to the accuracy of the language.

Building Skills Is as Important as Building Knowledge

A second important truth of language learning is that it requires mastery of a skill as much as acquisition of knowledge. In other words, it is not enough for students to know word meanings and structure rules; students need to be able to apply this knowledge quickly, even automatically, to express themselves smoothly, read competently, and comprehend spoken English rapidly. To build these skills, practice is necessary; study alone will not suffice.

Again, this point might seem obvious, but remember the unintended lessons that many approaches to language teaching leave students with. For many students, language learning has always been about learning grammar rules and memorizing vocabulary to perform well on tests. Many students have had little experience using English in actual conversation, and have not built the speed and automaticity that can only be developed through repeated practice. Naturally, students’ perceptions of the important parts of language learning are shaped by their experience in language classes, and it is not surprising if students are inclined to neglect practice in favor of study.

Language use has a heavy skill component, which demands that the user perform complex operations accurately and quickly, and this has some important implications for the ways in which students must learn:

1. Language learners need a lot of practice. To learn to speak well, students need to spend a lot of time speaking; in order to learn to read quickly and effectively, they need to spend a lot of time reading, and so forth. Almost all teachers would assent to this principle in theory, but in many English classrooms, the teacher still talks most of the time. Sometimes this is because teachers feel they need to dominate in order to maintain control in class; sometimes it is because teachers feel that if they aren’t teaching, they aren’t really earning their pay. For whatever reasons, stepping off the podium and giving students a chance to speak (read, write, etc.) is more problematic than it may initially seem.

2. Language learners need repeated practice. One important concept related to language learning is automaticity (Omaggio Hadley, 2001; Brown & Lee, 2015). The idea here is that many language skills require a student to do many different things at the same time; for example, speaking involves choosing words, applying grammar rules, and attending to pronunciation and intonation — all while trying to decide what to say. A speaker cannot consciously pay attention to all of these operations simultaneously, so some of them must be practiced often enough that they can be performed automatically. It takes repeated practice to learn to perform any skill smoothly and automatically, and language learning is no exception.

This point is important because students and teachers often unconsciously assume that their job is to cover the material in the book and ensure students complete any related exercises. Part of this unconscious assumption is that each point should only be covered one time and that, once the material is covered, students should know it. (Among students who have internalized this view of language learning, the protest that We’ve done this already is expected to effectively veto an activity whether or not they have really learned the skill in question.) The problem, of course, is that covering material in a textbook is often not enough to allow learners to build necessary skills, and you may need to repeat activities several times before students can use the new material automatically.

Language Learning Is a Battle of the Heart

A third fundamental reality of language learning is that feelings play a major role in language study and need to be taken seriously in planning a successful language learning campaign. As Ehrmann, Leaver, and Oxford (2003) put it, It is at least as important to manage feelings as it is to use more cognitive strategies, since negative feelings reduce the effectiveness of most [language] learning activities. Appropriate self-efficacy promotes persistence in the face of difficulty (p. 319). Learners who have a strong desire to learn and who feel good about their progress are far more likely to continue working hard in the long term.

One reason emotions play such an important role in language learning is that learning a foreign language well involves a great deal of effort over a long period of time. The basic rules of English grammar and a survival vocabulary can be learned within a few months, but mastering the language takes much longer. Students need considerable practice to develop effective skills in listening and speaking, not to mention reading and writing. It also takes a long time to amass a sufficient vocabulary for reading texts and listening to speech (e.g., movies, television) intended for native speakers. Finally, students can benefit from a good understanding of the cultures of English. All of this is particularly difficult for students in an EFL environment to achieve because they have few opportunities for practice and contact with Western culture. The problem is especially severe for English students in places such as Asia, the Middle East, and Africa whose native languages, writing systems, and cultures have little in common with those of the English-speaking world and whose English study entails far more learning.

FROM MAXI: Some students are surprised by the amount of time and effort required to learn a language. When I began studying Japanese in college, I had thought I would be advanced in Japanese after six semesters of courses (approximately 3 years); after all, the fifth and sixth semester courses were entitled advanced Japanese. At the end of these courses, I still felt incapable of having a conversation in Japanese, and I was too afraid of making grammar mistakes to even try. Most language students are probably not quite this naïve, but unreasonable expectations are not rare. As Scarcella and Oxford (1992) point out, Students are often unrealistic in what they believe they can and should accomplish in a given period of time, so their self-esteem suffers (p. 58).

Students who feel bad about their language learning are particularly vulnerable to discouragement and the temptation to quit. Even students who recognize that language study is emotionally demanding often fail to account for this problem in their study plans. Too many students assume that being a good student means toughing it out, slugging away at a language until it finally gives in.

FROM DON: I remember fantasizing that if I could just read one big Russian novel — even if it meant shoveling my way through the book word by word with a dictionary — I would conquer the Russian reading problem forever. The strategy may well have worked if I had been able to keep at it, but I never could. (Farber, 1991, seriously suggests this approach for beginning-level readers, using newspapers instead of novels. Granted, he makes it very clear that this approach is not for the fainthearted.) This tendency to try to take a language by frontal assault, of course, often reflects the way languages are taught, with inadequate attention to learners’ emotional needs.

Another problem arises from a peculiarity of the language learning process: The further students go, the more their rate of progress seems to slow. To some extent, plateaus are often experienced by intermediate- and advanced-level learners. Many learners also tend to make progress in spurts more than in a neat, step-by-step progression, and between those spurts students often feel that they have hit a plateau and are making no progress. These plateaus, however, are generally temporary and therefore do not pose a serious threat to students who know that such periods are a common feature of language learning, and that the best thing to do is keep on studying or lighten up for a short break before plunging back in.

A more serious problem arises from the fact that the more students learn of a language, the less visible impact each additional day of study makes on their skills; progress becomes harder and harder to discern. Beginning-level language students can see their progress very clearly; between Unit 1 and Unit 2 in a textbook, their knowledge of English doubles, and every new word they learn significantly increases their ability to communicate. However, as they reach more advanced skill levels, their progress becomes less apparent. Successful completion of Unit 74 does not make as obvious an impact on students’ English skill level as completion of Unit 6 did, and learning lower-frequency words like manual and tome doesn’t enhance their ability to communicate as much as mastering earlier words like book did. This means that students in the intermediate stages of language learning are especially vulnerable to discouragement because they often have relatively little sense